As I write this, it is 2:23 pm, the world is exploding, I am completely stuck on all my writing projects, my sunflowers are sagging, and it is too hot to do anything outside happily. But my house is beautifully cool—I sprang for a second AC when I got an extra gig last month—and my refrigerator is brimming with good ideas: produce from the local greenmarkets, red and white wine, seafood from Chelsea Market, butter from an Upstate friend, supplies from the old-school Italian grocery down the street. So I am cooking a crab risotto, the decline of western civilization be damned.
It’s not clear whether this diversion will actually do the trick. Pluto is erupting from its subterranean chambers and everything fetid in our culture has spewed forth. It’s hard to walk the path of normal life when rivers of pus and blood and vomit course around our feet. Gross, yes. But true.
Last Sunday I went to the beach for the first time this summer. The ocean is absolutely my favorite place but I’ve lacked the cash to finance a seaside getaway and don’t have it in me to play fifth wheel on someone else’s vacation. Instead I’ve been sulking and sweating on concrete, which is not exactly helping what I’ve taken to calling #ryejuly on social media.
You can see what a crab risotto I’m being.
Anyway, yes, the beach. I take great pleasure in planning, so the night before I froze two liters of water, boiled two eggs, bagged cherries and raw almonds, bought an iced americano since Oslo Coffee would be closed when I left in the morning. I packed a canvas bag with suntan lotion, a straw hat, notebooks and fashion magazines, sunglasses, an extra dress and pair of sandals for the drive home. I even remembered a plastic baggie to protect my iPhone and a wrist wallet to carry my car key.
At 6 am the next day I cued up the playlist I’d made for my journey: Venus Strong, which has pretty much been my aspiration if not the theme of my summer. As Michael Kiwanuka, Rihanna, Stevie, Dolly, and Aretha Aretha Aretha poured out of Minerva’s speakers, I wended through the empty city, Bushwick avenue melting into Atlantic Avenue and Howard Beach and, finally, the Rockaways—the first big horizon I’d seen since June. The relief I felt as I sailed over the Cross Bay Bridge was palpable.
I arrived a little after 7 am, and wondered if there’d be beach weather at all. The sky was overcast and it couldn’t have been more than 68 degrees. I realized I wouldn’t mind the grey—it’d stay empty, I’d stay temperate—so I spread out the red blanket I’d found in a Montana thrift store a decade ago and surrendered to the day. As the waves crashed a few feet away, I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I did not make wishes, for so few have come true in the last few years. I just became one with my surroundings.
I was salt.
I was sand.
I was sea.
I was sky.
Eventually the sun emerged from the clouds and my skin warmed. When I opened my eyes I saw the beach had filled up around me. It was only 8 am, so mostly my neighbors were older New Yorkers, my early bird crew. I asked an unironically blue-haired mermaid swanning beneath an umbrella to watch my things, then dove into the waves—cool, huge, perfect. Each time one crashed around me I screamed with involuntary joy. A kid looked at me askance, then recognized me as a kindred spirit and joined in my yelping.
For the next four hours, I played. I made friends with a very small, very old couple cowering at the water’s edge and eased them into the waves. I threw myself on my blanket. I sat on the sand and watched the tide go out. I rubbed lotion into my limbs and loved them more because they were working well, because they were bathed in coconut and the light of a yellow star. I listened to my music and the chatter of everyone around me. I munched cherries and drank my melted water, still wonderfully cold. The people behind me—three darkly tanned sixtysomethings from Jackson Heights, sitting pretty with rainbow chairs and shiny gold teeth and sun-damage battle scars—agreed to watch my things for a little longer, and I took a long walk down the beach, grinning like a mad woman at the kids digging in the sand, the lovers slurping each other’s faces, the young handsome men playing soccer in the ocean spray. I collected shells and ate two very messy fish tacos and drank a big pineapple mint juice and dove into the water to clean myself up.
I was salt.
I was sand.
I was sea.
I was sky.
God, I was happy.
Back at the blanket, I pulled out my book but realized that, even with my headphones, my neighbors were too loud to drown out. So I started chatting, too. The man had watched this week’s NY1 show, and he parroted back my opinions on “Ghostbusters” and “Introducing Princess Shaw.” It was a little embarrassing to hear my strong feminist opinions flying out of the mouth of a retired firefighter from Queens, but he seemed happy enough with what I’d had to say. His girlfriend and her bestie were greatly amused and, when we he wandered off for a walk, started talking about their love lives. We all agreed that, if kids weren’t involved, marriage was basically a bad idea. “I like my fella,” the smaller woman said, gesturing in the vague direction of her beau. “But I love my space. Fighting about the cap on the toothpaste tube isn’t romantic.”
We were quiet for a second, struck dumb by the truth of her statement. Then, alas, alack, the topic of the election came up, and the two women avowed their commitment to Donald Trump. “That Hillary is a whore,” said one of them. “I’ve been a Democrat my whole life but I’m just hoping he puts smarter people in his cabinet,” said the other.
I could not engage with the language, let alone the logic. I touched my nose gingerly and realized it was burned despite obsessive sunblock application.
Time to go.
By the time I returned to my car, serenity was a distant memory. Drivers were circling the now-full parking lot, and a throwdown broke out about my space before I could even pull out of it. The roads was chockablock with traffic and gas fumes and sad-eyed people peddling mangos and water. My shoulders sagged under the burden of all the anger and inequality and ignorance running the show. I came home, took a shower, slept until the next dawn.
It doesn’t help that I don’t have enough sweetness in my personal life. I can tell this is true because I’ve been craving sugar though I gave it up early last year. An overwhelming fear of the future grips me on every level—I’m afraid of the next decade of my life and of my country. Afraid I’ll never have a real romance again. Afraid my jobs will dry up before I find other ones. Afraid my writing will never find a bigger home. Afraid my writing doesn’t deserve a bigger home. Afraid my beauty will fade so that no one will ever look for the sweet (and spicy) beneath my sour. Afraid hate will trump love.
Trump being the operative word.
My risotto’s about done now, and it’s turned out to be a real winner. I’d scanned several recipes online and then devised one of my own, sauteeing leftover basil, tomatoes, garlic, onions, corn, peas, hot peppers, and crabmeat with red wine, tomato paste, half and half, and fish stock, and folding it into the rice porridge I’d made in my pressure cooker. I’ve paired it with a chilled red, and am trying to ignore the heap of dirty dishes awaiting me in the sink. I am trying to remain elemental.
I was salt.
I was sand.
I was sea.
I was sky.